2 Months 'Til Mrs. (2 'Til Series) Read Free

detail in the middle of the breakup mess—it was snowing
here, there, and everywhere right now, what was the difference? “The flight was
canceled,” she mumbled evasively, hoping to leave it at that.
    “Classic!” Connor guffawed. “Anything that could go
wrong will happen to you, sis.”
    “Thanks,” she groused.
    “Life is real, not ideal,” Elizabeth said sadly,
making Catherine wonder if the sad part of that was pity for her plight or if
her mother was speaking of her own misfortune of having an unexpected and
uninvited guest for the night—a useless daughter who couldn’t just settle down
and have a family already.
    With that welcome, she couldn’t help but realize that
it would have been easier if her parents had never given up their log cabin dream
of moving to Wyoming.Then she wouldn’t have had a home to run home to now
that her life was in the shits. But as far as Elizabeth Hemmings was concerned,
in no uncertain terms, a grandchild was too precious a resource to waste from
half a country away— Damn you, Connor, and your procreating self!
    “Catherine Marie, where are your shoes?” her mother
exclaimed, in the same tone she had often used over the years when she caught
her daughter wearing shoes in the house—muddy shoes… on the carpet.
Elizabeth Hemmings was known to invoke Catherine Marie whenever she thought
Catherine was being insouciant about the rules of the house or life in general.
It seemed that was the whole purpose of having a middle name, using that
Christian name to shame children into submission. Catherine Marie always fell
in line; she always did whatever her mother said.
    Catherine Marie was a ninny.

-2-
     
     
    All she’d wanted was to come back home and gorge
herself on a home-cooked meal, like the good old days when she’d also had no
life and no prospects but at least had a whole heart. Instead she was
surrounded by all of Chesterton, dressed in their casual holiday finest, while
she was trapped in the wrong generational dimension, dressed in her mother’s
casual holiday finest. But there’d been no fighting Elizabeth Hemmings’ supreme
forces of order and event etiquette when she threw her dishtowel over her
shoulder and whisked Catherine upstairs to the master closet before guests
arrived and saw her unkempt daughter. Fifteen minutes later she had been
transformed from head to toe, clomping downstairs in her mother’s clunky
old-lady heels to find the house practically standing room, like guests had
materialized out of thin air—everyone wondering why one of the Hemmings kids
was such a loser without a spouse or a family or even her own clothes to wear.
    Her mother was still slender and stylish for a woman
in her sixties and for all intents and purposes her sophisticated-senior look
was an upgrade—slightly short burgundy slacks and a silver-threaded twinset
designed to bring out the gray highlights that, if they actually existed, would
certainly make Catherine suicidal. But she felt like she was playing dress-up
against her will when all she really wanted was to run back upstairs and throw
herself across her childhood bed in a full-bodied tantrum of self-absorbed
grief. That was what she’d come dressed for in the first place—yoga pants and a
sweatshirt that would have afforded her the most flexibility for kicking and
screaming. Fitting fashion for a woman who had just yanked the reins on her
relationship and brought it stumbling and sputtering to a stop in that place
where she’d said, “Maybe the cancelation is for the best. Maybe it’s just what
we need to wake up to the reality of this whole situation. We’re different
people. Worlds apart.” So dramatic ! “Maybe we should take some time and see
other people and figure out what we really want.”
    Idiot!
    All because of a stupid freak snow storm that proved to her that she and Fynn shouldn’t be together. That they had to stop fooling
themselves and wake up to the reality that their weekends-only